Who are FEMEN anyway?

The phenomenon of protesting naked took over the media in the past year. Women who consider themselves free go out in the streets topless to introduce their issues and to bring attention to them. These women are not asking for women right as much as they are asking for their “own” rights. This Neo-Feminist movement started by a group that was founded in 2008 called FEMEN. Their first topless protest was against sex tourists. The FEMEN group started appearing on the media as something wrong, but it inspired other women to defend their own rights. My example here is Alia Al-Mahdi who is an Egyptian girl, and she was the first Egyptian girl to do a topless protest.
Since Egypt is now ruled by Mohamed Morsi - an ex-member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - , it is not surprising that there are people who are against the Islamic System. While Al-Mahdi was in Europe, Al-Mahdi and her friends went to the Egyptian embassy in Sweden topless holding signs that says “NO to Sharia Constitution”. This a message of a FEMEN Arab about “her” rights for not wearing hijab, and getting her own freedom. Al-Mahdi caused a huge argument among the Arab countries, especially Egypt, with the proposals of some Egyptians to not consider Al-Mahdi an Egyptian after what she did. This new FEMEN move by Arab women are called the "topless jihad".
In Islam, the women rights are equaled with men, but to an extent. For some of the conservative countries such as Saudia Arabia, Women are not allowed to drive or work a decent job. Two days ago, the first Saudi women attorney/activist was registered. This woman did not go out and did a topless protest. From my perspective, it is not freedom if you just take off your clothes. Women who take off their clothes are indicated as prostitutes no matter what their needs/wants were. There is always a way to convey your message to the community.
In my opinion, in the sociology, the three waves of feminism were nothing but a start for what we are seeing these days; women using nudity to ask for their rights. Women should have the rights to work as long as it does not conflict with any religious context (no matter what was their religion). Also it is not the women rights to use nudity and disturb people to get what they want.

The Reel Bad America

I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I’m a journalist, or just that I grew up around so many Hollywood movies, that I never really thought of the details portrayed in movies. To the smallest of details, like the race of the extras used for background shots that we don’t think we even notice, directors shoot a scene placing everything into place, as if they’re drawing an image.
Ingroups and outgroups really affect the characters in movies, and basically decide on who is portrayed as the good/bad guy in movies. This happens for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that the presence of an outgroup, or an enemy, creates solidarity and unity for ingroups. When I say outgroup, I mean a group which is founded on hatred or opposition from an ingroup, which is a group with which people strongly identify particularly when that attachment is made. Basically, an outgroup is what sociologists call “The Other” in movies. Those are the people who don’t belong and shouldn’t necessarily belong, like the alienated, unwanted, enemies.



Usually, Arabs are portrayed as “The Other” in Hollywood movies. This is could be done by placing no subtitles on the Arabic “terrorists,” like they’re aliens who we shouldn’t even get and are deserted in a desert somewhere with all their money and belly dancer women.
Watching the movie Amreeka really left me thinking of all these things. When I see movies like that, the first thing I think of is how much I could relate to the theme of the movie.


When I stepped back and looked at it from a sociological perspective, I realized how much it tried to implement all this messages through the way it was shot. It was obvious that the outgroup portrayed in this movie was Israel, who was automatically every viewers disliked character in the movie. This happened because of the scenes placed in the movie, which were basically scenes of them at the borders, acting like ignorant authority, who were just restricting a nice mother and her little boy from entering a city that they belong to.
In this movie, America was portrayed differently that it would be in a Hollywood movie. It was not the most powerful, free country in the world. However, here we also see some Americans as ignorant beings who judge everyone on unrelated matters. Some of the boy’s classmates would call him Osama, or a member of “Qaeda,” based on his race, regardless of the fact that he is not Iraqi or even Muslim.
I found this as a very interesting way of socializing a culture, based on the movies people see even as kids. Even for me, an Arab Muslim, I am a lot more aware of what terrorism is and differentiating that from Islam and Jihad. The biggest reason for this is the media and movies I was exposed to in the past 21 years.